Is Urssaf papers request normal?

MY DAUGHTER is an auto-entrepreneur. She has been truthful in her dealings with bodies like CAF, RSI and Urssaf to whom she has to give an account of herself regularly, including what she does and how much she earns. Now Urssaf has asked her to supply two years of bank statements and names of people she has worked for. She is concerned that she has been chosen as an easy target. Is this normal practice? R.S.

It is unlikely that she is being targeted especially. Urssaf does have wide powers to do checks on businesses and to ask for different kinds of paperwork. According to the branch for the Dordogne, a so-called contrôle sur pièces (check via paperwork) – as opposed to one where an inspector visits in person – may be done so as to make sure that firms are applying social charges rules properly - checking for example that there is no discrepancy between what has been declared and what is required by law. Any firm can be checked no matter how small and they are usually picked at random from a selection with certain target criteria that year (relating to factors like size of business, business type or when it was set up.)